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    Gapless Quantum Spin Liquid in the Triangular System Sr3CuSb2O9

    S. Kundu1,*, Aga Shahee1, Atasi Chakraborty2, K. M. Ranjith3, B. Koo3, Jörg Sichelschmidt3, Mark T. F. Telling4, P. K. Biswas4, M. Baenitz3 et al.

    I. Dasgupta2, Sumiran Pujari1, and A. V. Mahajan1,†

    • 1Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India
    • 2School of Physical Sciences, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Jadavpur, Kolkata 700032, India
    • 3Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, 01187 Dresden, Germany
    • 4ISIS Pulsed Neutron and Muon Source, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Harwell Campus, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX110QX, United Kingdom

    • *skundu37@gmail.com
    • †mahajan@phy.iitb.ac.in

    Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 267202 – Published 28 December, 2020

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.267202

    Abstract

    We report gapless quantum spin liquid behavior in the layered triangular Sr3CuSb2O9 system. X-ray diffraction shows superlattice reflections associated with atomic site ordering into triangular Cu planes well separated by Sb planes. Muon spin relaxation measurements show that the S=12 moments at the magnetically active Cu sites remain dynamic down to 65 mK in spite of a large antiferromagnetic exchange scale evidenced by a large Curie-Weiss temperature θCW≃−143  K as extracted from the bulk susceptibility. Specific heat measurements also show no sign of long-range order down to 0.35 K. The magnetic specific heat (Cm) below 5 K reveals a Cm=γT+αT2 behavior. The significant T2 contribution to the magnetic specific heat invites a phenomenology in terms of the so-called Dirac spinon excitations with a linear dispersion. From the low-T specific heat data, we estimate the dominant exchange scale to be ∼36  K using a Dirac spin liquid ansatz which is not far from the values inferred from microscopic density functional theory calculations (∼45  K) as well as high-temperature susceptibility analysis (∼70  K). The linear specific heat coefficient is about 18  mJ/mol K2 which is somewhat larger than for typical Fermi liquids.

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